


See how far it bends

by twistedmiracle



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Bitty's got thighs, Bitty's not on the hockey team, Don't copy to another site, First Meetings, Jack has eyes, M/M, Meet-Cute, Still Samwell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-10-29 21:54:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20803580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedmiracle/pseuds/twistedmiracle
Summary: Jack wakes up a couple hours early and knows more sleep is not going to happen, so — on a whim — he heads off to Faber before dawn on a Tuesday because obviously no one else is there. Obviously. No one else is as obsessed with skating as Jack is.





	See how far it bends

**Author's Note:**

> Title from “When I was older” by Billie Eilish
> 
> As per usual, a thousand million thanks to Sunny, for the excellent beta job.  
◼️◼️🌟◼️◼️◼️  
◼️🌟🌟🌟🌟◼️  
🌟💥💥🌟💥✨  
◼️🌟🌟💥🌟◼️  
◼️◼️🌟🌟◼️◼️  
Any remaining errors are purely my own.  


Jack’s eyes opened to the darkness. He looked at his clock and sighed. 4:52am. He didn’t need to be anywhere until team breakfast, but he would never fall back asleep now. Luckily, being captain (two years in a row, now), he had a key code for Faber. No one would be skating there this early on a Tuesday. Confident enough in this not to bother checking the Faber scheduling app, he pulled himself from his bed and made quick work of dressing, grabbing a protein shake, and heading over. 

Jack had easily escaped the Haus without waking anyone else, strode to Faber, headed to his stall and put on his skates. Skating, he knew, would get his day off to a calm and productive start; even if he was alone.

But when he’d approached the ice, he’d quickly realized he wasn’t alone in the building. Instead, there was someone on the ice already. Skating. _Figure_ skating. Gorgeously, too.

Hidden in the shadows by the door that led to the hallway with the locker rooms, Jack stood, stunned, as a... boy? Girl? Samwell student, surely. In all black - tight leggings and a loose, long black t-shirt skated in a tight circle, one strong leg up like a triangle. The wires between their earbuds and phone were suddenly visible in the pale light from the ceiling. No one had bothered to turn on most of the lights yet. 

Well. The earbuds explained the near silence, as well as the lack of the figure skater noticing any sounds Jack had made by shutting doors or clomping skates. 

Jack watched people skate all the time, but they were usually hockey players. Hockey players in heavy pads, not figure skaters in skin tight leggings. Hockey players going for speed and brute strength, not figure skaters aiming for elegance, beauty; form over function. Jack was not accustomed to watching people skate gorgeously, was the thing. That was surely what had his heart rate picking up, his breathing patterns changing, and something in his libido sitting up and taking sharp notice. It was only that. Right? 

It wasn’t the skater’s long, slender, muscular arms. It wasn’t the gentle lines of their long fingers as they swept around the curve of the rink closest to where Jack stood. It wasn’t the skater’s strength, or stamina, or speed. Or ass. Definitely not their ass, despite the fantastic view of it Jack got when the skater bent at the waist and all the way over and grabbed their ankles for one long heartbeat of a moment. It was a really nice ass, though… round and muscled and... Jack felt shame, hot, sudden and fleeting. He shouldn’t stare like this at someone who had no idea he was there. But — Faber wasn’t anyone’s private property. And no one had reserved it for this hour, either. Had they?

Jack checked, just to be sure, glancing away from the figure skater — their strength, their grace, their neck, their _thighs_ — in brief snatches as he opened Samwell’s Faber app and looked through the calendar. It was surprisingly hard to stop watching that skater, but Jack managed to, just enough to see that someone had, in fact, reserved the rink from 4 to 6am. Someone named E. Bittle. Unsurprisingly, it had been done via the figure skating team’s authorization. Well, that didn’t help. Jack knew no one on that team, and it was co-ed, too.

Well, Jack wasn’t going to get on the ice if E. Bittle had it reserved, but — he clicked the app — now he had it reserved, too. For the hour after E. Bittle did. Hugging a shadow, Jack settled in to wait. 

Watching this Bittle figure skate was not a hardship, truthfully. Even when he pulled his eyes fully and guiltily away from the skater’s firm ass. That is, Jack had always enjoyed watching people do things well. E. Bittle was small, elegant, sometimes shockingly fast, and — as far as Jack knew — very, very good. Jack knew little about figure skating, specifically, but ice skating had been Jack's home, bread and butter, his country of origin and place of surety since he was 4 or 5 years old. And this — Boy? Girl? Non-binary person? Jack still couldn’t tell and wasn’t sure he cared — this E. Bittle could _skate_. Clean lines. Elegant shapes. Speed, power, substance. Clarity of motion. Bittle’s skating was constantly surprising, and yet every time they switched to a different shape or speed or technique Jack would almost immediately see the rightness of it. The obvious reason for the change. Of _course_ that came next, he thought, again and once again.

Jack had something Shitty laughingly called a “competence kink.” He was serious, too, even if he always _seemed_ to be kidding when he talked about it. When Jack had finally understood what it meant, however, he’d understood both why Shitty meant it and why Shitty was laughing. Because it was true. It was so true it was funny. 

It was weird not to understand something so important about himself until he was a 23-year old college sophomore, but that was the magic of being close friends with Shitty. He was very good at giving Jack new perspectives. On all manner of things.

Jack hadn't thought about Camilla, for example, as anything but a fellow Samwell team captain, until he’d seen her in a tennis match. (One Shitty had dragged him to.) She’d won. Magnificently. And suddenly Jack had seen things he’d never managed to notice before. The shine of her hair. The tilt of her smile. The curve of her hip. He’d asked her to Annie’s for a coffee date not long after. And then things had been very nice for a few months, until they fizzled away and were over.

And as E. Bittle, early riser and figure skater, twirled and sped and spun in the shadows cast by the rising sun, Jack found himself noticing the shine of their hair, the elegance of their movements, the strength in their thighs. As Bittle zipped away and back again, Jack noticed the bulge of their calves, the length and slenderness of their neck, the softness of their hands. E. Bittle wore no jewelry, Jack noted cautiously. No metal shone at their neck or wrist. Or any fingers. Bittle bent at the waist and seemed so much taller, somehow. Bittle spread their arms wide and Jack found himself wanting to skate inside them.

A blessing and a curse of bisexuality — as Jack saw his own life, anyway — was that as Jack became more and more interested in the enigmatic skater he still watched from the silent shadows, he became more and more certain he had no excuse not to approach the other student. They might not be attracted to men. They might not be attracted to _Jack_. But as 6am, and Jack’s reserved hour, crept closer, Jack knew — however the skater might identify — _Jack_ was attracted. 

Perhaps because of the competence kink thing, perhaps because he was a hockey robot, perhaps because he was a little older than most Samwell students; Jack didn’t ask a lot of people out. And of those few, so far, all of them at Samwell had been girls. In part, that was accidental, but in part it was deliberate. Jack was headed, full steam ahead and all fingers and toes crossed, for the NHL. Dating a boy in college was risky. Maybe if his mother wasn’t a famous model. Maybe if his father wasn’t a famous hockey star. Maybe then he would feel less exposed. Maybe that was why he had shut down those feelings once or twice before, when he’d seen a handsome boy, a smart boy, an elegant boy. But this morning, watching this skater, having no idea who they were and wanting to sit across a booth from them at Annie’s anyway… he knew shoving down these desires would be a cop-out he couldn’t quite stomach. He hoped E. Bittle was a girl. Or that they would turn him down. But he had to ask.

It was just about 6am now, but Bittle seemed to be aware of the time. They were slowing down, stretching, starting to move toward the gate, to leave the ice.

Jack stepped out of the corner, feeling his heart rate pick up again as he moved out of invisibility. He knew the moment E. Bittle noticed him. The other skater stopped suddenly on their path toward Jack and the locker rooms. They put a hand to their heart in surprise and Jack simultaneously melted a little and stiffened in reflected discomfort.

“Sorry,” Jack rumbled, feeling exceedingly Canadian. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you, only, I have the ice next.”

“Oh, of course,” Bittle said, in an accent Jack could only place as from somewhere in the southern parts of America and then… sweet. E. Bittle’s voice was sweet. They came closer and Jack saw an Adam’s Apple, a touch of blonde beard stubble (but only a touch), a very slight bulge at the crotch, under that long t-shirt. Probably a boy, but even more attractive, now that he’d come closer. 

Jack swallowed and looked back at Bittle’s eyes. He stepped closer, his hockey skates mashing down the protective foam flooring as his heart rate increased again. “I, euh, don’t know much about figure skating, but you were a joy to watch.” He didn’t want Bittle to leave. “I’m Jack. My pronouns are he, him.” Jack felt like Shitty was standing right behind him but he needed to hear how Bittle would respond. “I’m the captain of the hockey team.”

“Me too. He, him, I mean. I’m Eric. And I know you play hockey.” His cheeks went a little pink. It was wonderful. “I’ve watched some of your home games. I played a little, myself, in high school. Co-ed non-contact, though. Nothing like what you all do. Y’all are great.”

Jack felt his chest tighten. “You, euh, played hockey? That’s ‘swawesome.”

“That’s… what?” Eric Bittle asked, and he giggled lightly. Jack felt his stomach drop into his shoes. A giggle that cute might be more than he could handle at six in the morning.

“Oh. Just, euh, ‘swawesome. You know. So awesome. Hockey team slang?”

“Your team has their own slang?” Eric Bittle tipped his head just a little. He waved his hands around, too. Jack wanted to catch them. “That’s so cute!”

Jack nodded, distracted. Cute was exactly the right word. 

“The figure skating team doesn’t have any special slang, sadly,” Bittle said, and he pouted for a half second. Jack nodded, hoping Bittle might pout again, but not able to think of anything to say that might make it happen without making Bittle actually feel _sad_. Making Bittle legitimately sad was not acceptable.

“Maybe we should, though!” Bittle said, shiny as a penny and smiling just as bright. “I bet that’s good for team bonding and such, ain’t it?”

Jack nodded.

“Everyone on campus, I think, knows how bonded Samwell men’s hockey is,” Bittle said seriously. Then he smiled enormously again. “Y’all’s kegsters are legendary.”

“You should come,” Jack said, surprising himself. Had he ever invited someone to a kegster before? 

“How sweet of you to invite me!” Bittle said. “I’d like that. When is it?”

“Euh,” Jack said, thrown off balance. “I don’t know?” He felt himself turning red. “The boys always plan those.”

Bittle frowned a tiny bit, before he seemed to realise Jack could see it. He wiped it off his face and gave Jack a sort of a fakeish smile. “Look at me, talking your ear off when you wanna be on the ice. I’m so sorry, I do ramble on sometimes! Bad habit. I should get these skates off and get outta your hair.”

“You, euh, if you want? Unless,” Jack said, and he paused, helpless, when Bittle tipped his head, “unless you’d like to skate… with me?”

“I wouldn’t wanna be in your way,” Bittle said, clearly unsure.

“Please,” Jack said, and he could hear the desperation in his own voice. “I don’t, I mean, I’d really like… you wouldn’t be in my way,” he finally choked out. “I’d like to, euh, get to know you better?” He put out a hand into the air, hoping Bittle would take it, but feeling like even just a handshake would be a thousand times better than this mess he had created with his awkwardness. Who the hell invited someone to a party that no one has planned yet?

“Well,” Bittle said, and he was blushing now, almost to his ears. 

Jack swallowed heavily.

“That sounds very nice,” Bittle said, very quiet. He reached for Jack’s outstretched hand. 

Instead of shaking it, Jack clutched the other boy’s right hand in his own, and he tugged — just the smallest bit. Bittle looked up at him, opened his mouth just barely, and stared into Jack’s eyes.

Bittle’s eyes were glowing in the pale dawn, and Jack felt like his body couldn’t decide between arousal and a heart attack.

“How’s about I share your skate with you, then you share a booth with me at Annie’s,” Bittle said quietly, as though he couldn’t believe he’d said such a thing.

“It’s a date,” Jack said, and he took a step toward the ice, Eric Bittle’s hand still in his own. 

“I, yes,” Eric said. He switched hands so they could skate hand-in-hand, and together they stepped off to glide as the sun rose through the great windows overlooking the ice.

Fin


End file.
